For many care workers, lifting less able-bodied person is a daily often recurring basic operation. In order to limit the physical stress for the care workers, manual lifting has been reduced in particular the last ten years, and is replaced with the use of so-called hoists, with which care-needing persons can be moved relatively efficiently from a seated position to a standing position and vice versa.
EP-A-0 782 430 describes an example of a hoist known from the state of the art. During use of the hoist described in this publication, first, a lifting belt forming part of the hoist is passed behind the back and under the armpits of a person to be moved, whereupon the person can be moved. The hoist is provided with an articulate arm comprising a lever which is hingedly connected, by a first end, to a frame and is hingedly connected, by a second end, to an auxiliary arm. The free ends of the auxiliary arm are provided with points of attachment for a lifting belt. The specification describes that the path the points of attachment travel is controlled by a control unit in which different control programs can be stored for realizing different paths. An important drawback of the known hoist is that the person still has a relatively large freedom of movement after the lifting belt is provided, so that during moving, the person is secured to a limited extent only. This may lead to unsafe situations which limits the usability of the known hoist considerably. The path the person travels is not well defined in that the lifting belt offers great freedom of movement. Furthermore, it is frightening for the user to be “suspended” in such a movable lifting belt. In addition, as a rule, persons suffering from, for instance, hemiplegia or hemiparesis will engage the hoisting belt in an askew condition so that the persons to be moved are usually loaded and moved in an unnatural and often incorrect manner.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,596,298 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,411,044 show hoists with armpit supports. Each armpit support is connected to the upward directed end of a telescopic lifting column which is movable upward and downward relative to a base. Furthermore, each telescopic arm is pivotal with respect to the base. A drawback of the known apparatus is that a considerable part of the lifting force is exerted on the armpits, which is painful.
DE-U-202 17 673 describes a hoist for patients, provided with two padded armpit supports which engage the ribcage of the patient with a particular clamping force, while avoiding too strong a clamping force and wherein the patient is also prevented from gliding from the clamping device. The clamping direction is movable obliquely upward and downward along a fixedly disposed guide path. Therefore, with the apparatus known from this publication, only a single lifting movement is possible.
What is envisaged is a hoist with which the above-described drawbacks are reduced or solved.